Digital multimedia sharing in virtual worlds

Abstract

A method for producing and presenting a virtual immersive multimedia presentation in a virtual world environment. The method includes obtaining access to a plurality of digital multimedia, obtaining access to a virtual world environment capable of displaying digital multimedia. Based on a designated criteria automatically selecting one or more of the following: a subset of the digital multimedia from the plurality of digital multimedia, an immersive virtual environment from the plurality of prefabricated environments, and an avatar configuration from the plurality of avatar configurations for creating the digital multimedia presentation for display in the virtual world environment.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The invention is related to a virtual environment for reliving memories by interacting with digital multimedia and more particularly to a method for the automatic creation of these virtual environments, multimedia presentations and sharing of these multimedia presentations.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Prior to 1850, the human need for memory keeping of friends and family was as fundamental as it is today. During that pre-industrial period, memory keeping was accomplished via artists who rendered silhouettes and painted portraits, which generally were, at best, approximate likenesses of the people they were meant to immortalize. Post-1850, silhouettes and portraits were quickly replaced by analog film photography, as photographs went well beyond likenesses to produce images representing what the subject actually looked like, were much cheaper to produce, and could be captured by the masses, not limited to a handful of itinerant artists. Clearly, histor...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0050]The present invention is directed to overcome significant shortfalls in viewing and sharing digital multimedia, as described above, and takes full advantage of the capabilities of virtual worlds yet provides a relatively easy method for the creation of a digital multimedia presentation and sharing of the presentation among a plurality of viewers.

Problems solved by technology

But, a major shortfall of these film captured images was that one had to wait for chemical processing to see the outcome, and sharing images with distant relatives could take many days depending upon the speed of the mails.

Yet, significant shortfalls remain in the presentation of digital photography and digital video (hereafter referred to as digital multimedia).

However, whether in albums, montages, collages, slideshows or other formats, the images are displayed in a manner that does not emulate the environment in which the memories were created.

Further, whatever this viewing environment is, it is relatively fixed, with little ability to change it for the next viewing session's content, or based on the preferences of the user.

Given this physical separation, one can not “see” or otherwise experience together the reaction of friends and family to digital multimedia, having to rely on spoken or written word via telephone or email, often hours or days after the excitement of the initial viewing.

Written or spoken word alone is often inferior to “seeing” the physical reaction from friends and family in real time via facial expression, body language, as well as physical presence as a sign of each attendee's level of interest and commitment to the group.

Further, on those occasions when many family and friends do gather to relive memories, the viewing environment often can not accommodate them, with restrictions to size of the room, seating arrangements, visual access to the screen, ambient lighting with glare, and other problems.

Further, in a shared presentation each of the viewers is limited to viewing the same multimedia at the same time.

Creating a presentation for use in the virtual worlds to relive memories is a manual, labor-intensive process involving complex software tools that are beyond the technical capability of most users.

As a result, virtual worlds are not widely used for the reliving of memories.

428. However, the virtual worlds are created by dense video or still photography of the real world and are, therefore, limited to resembling a small and therefore insufficient area of the real w

orld. In addition these methods involve specialized capture hardware or methodologies not used by a typical non-technical

However, the images are manually selected from the limited collection on a digital camera and the virtual world is viewed only on the camera display (or on a television to which the digital camera is connected).

These limitations force the user into the time-consuming task of manually selecting images, greatly restricting the range of virtual worlds that are created and preventing collaboration with users not in the immediate vicinity of the camera.

None of the prior art successfully utilizes the advantages of the virtual world to overcome the shortfalls described above.

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